


A Tree of Love with Branches of Hope and Leaves of Happiness.

by kuriositet



Category: Bandom, My Chemical Romance
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-24
Updated: 2012-06-24
Packaged: 2017-11-08 10:05:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,800
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/442029
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kuriositet/pseuds/kuriositet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's a big, old oak tree not far from the Ieros' house. Gerard loves drawing that tree.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Tree of Love with Branches of Hope and Leaves of Happiness.

**Author's Note:**

> Written in 2010 in the middle of a very long period of writer's block. This kept me sane. Beta credit to [happilyappled](http://archiveofourown.org/users/happilyappled).

There's a large oak tree not far from the Iero house. It's probably one of the largest trees in the entire town, and the oldest. You can see it from pretty far away, and it's one of the most beautiful trees Gerard has ever seen. 

It's not the green leaves covering the branches in the summer, or the way the sun falls on it and creates a great shadow on the grass beneath it, or even the pretty, dark-haired boy who used to always sit on one of the lower branches. It's the way the rough bark looks and feels, the age of the tree and the peculiar shape of a very old oak tree that fascinates him. He's aware that most old oak trees do look that way, but he's sure that this one is special in some way. It's got to be the oldest tree around, and it's got to have seen so many things that no one else has seen. 

He likes to draw it, he always did, sometimes sitting across the field next to it and drawing it as a whole, but sometimes he just draws a branch or two to get the smaller details in. 

That's how he met Frank. 

He went to the tree to draw it everyday for several weeks, but he never noticed the young boy perched on top of the second lowest branch as he was well hidden among the leaves. The day Frank jumped down just behind him he thought he's have a heart attack, he was so surprised, but the boy had just laughed. 

"Why are you always drawing my tree?" Gerard had just looked at him in confusion, wondering how a tree that had to be several centuries old could belong to a teenager. Frank had grinned and leant back against the rope ladder hanging from the tree. 

"Because it's beautiful," Gerard had finally answered him, earning another wide grin from the young boy, and that's how their great friendship started.

From that day, whenever Gerard came to draw his favorite tree, Frank was right there too, whether he was up on his branch with Gerard sitting below, or they were both out in the field, Frank using Gerard's lap as a pillow as he lay there half asleep. 

There were many long nights, sunny afternoons and sometimes even rainy mornings where Frank would hold an umbrella for Gerard to draw under. Then, when they were both completely soaked through, they'd walk the outskirts of the small town to the tiny apartment Gerard was renting. They could have gone to Frank's house, which was just across a field, but from the first time they met there had been a silent agreement for them to just stay at Gerard's place if they needed a roof over their heads.

There was the day they first kissed. Standing in the middle of Gerard's kitchen, waiting for their coffee, Frank shivering in his wet clothes, and Gerard wrapping a blanket around the younger boy's shoulders.

"It smells like you." Frank smiled sweetly, looking up at Gerard whose hands were still at Frank's shoulders. Then one hand was at Frank's cheek, and he had taken a small step closer, and it was Frank who closed the final gap between their mouths, causing Gerard to emit a soft sound of surprise.

Not more than a few seconds passed until they broke away, though, both with equally shy smiles on their faces, and it wasn't until an hour later when Frank had fallen asleep against his shoulder, that Gerard realized he had actually kissed Frank. The beautiful boy in the beautiful tree. Frank's tree.

The next day they kissed again, in the shadow of the great tree. Gerard had never felt so free, with his arms locked around Frank's waist, the younger boy's hands caressing his cheeks and sweeping through his hair. Their lips melting and their tongues caressing, air wasn't needed and they didn't look up to see the sun and the shadow move. They were locked in this moment in time, and it would be one of the best moments of their lives. 

Then, Gerard drew the tree. And, for the first time, he let Frank be in the picture too, and it came to be his best drawing yet, with the setting sun in the background and Frank's glittering eyes and happy smile in the foreground. 

Then they sat there, wrapped up in each other's embrace as the darkness fell around them and the air got chilly. They weren't far from falling asleep, but the moment Gerard felt Frank's body get just a little bit heavier, he awoke him with a kiss, and the boy nuzzled his face against Gerard's neck. 

Nothing made Gerard as happy as having the heat of Frank's body heating the side of his own, along with the soft, even breaths hitting the side of his neck. Whether they were sitting by the tree, or somewhere in the apartment, just having Frank by his side made Gerard feel a little happier. 

"I love you." Frank said it first, not a month into their relationship, and Gerard's words were quick to follow. Never in his life had he felt like he did for Frank for another man, or boy. Every night Frank went home, Gerard's heart and entire body ached to be close to the boy again. 

They had sex once in Gerard's apartment, the first time, but after they made love under the tree, hidden out of sight by the huge trunk, it was never the same to do it anywhere else. 

It was _their_ tree. Their tree of love, and beneath that tree is where they belonged. 

So they stayed there, every day and night, until the summer ended.

It ended far too soon.

It was just in the middle of August when Gerard got a phonecall. It was his brother. He had to go home.

Telling Frank his grandmother was dying and that he had to leave, without Frank, wasn't even the worst part. It was telling him he didn't know when he was going to come back that really broke his heart, because he could see in Frank's eyes what he was thinking. 

"You're not coming back." A lonely tear fell from his left eye, and when Gerard lifted his hand to wipe it away he stepped back. "You won't come back," he whispered, more tears welling up in his once glittering happy eyes. 

Gerard reached out again, and this time Frank let him. "Of course I will," he whispered, pulling Frank close and hiding in his hair a thousand kisses for him to have when Gerard wasn't there.

Frank never found them.

Gerard wasn't able to come back until April, as his grandmother kept getting better and worse every other week, until she passed in March, and then he had to stay and help with funeral arrangements, although he wanted nothing more than to seek comfort in Frank's arms under their tree.

He didn't go to Frank's house, because, although he knew perfectly well which house it was, he had never been there and he'd much rather reunite with his love where they had first met. So he went to the tree, and sat there for an entire day. Frank didn't show. 

He stayed until way past midnight, though, and returned first thing in the morning, but with the same result. He didn't sit in their usual spot, but on the other side so that he was facing the Iero house. If Frank wouldn't come to the tree, he might spot Gerard from the house, or Gerard might spot him.

But he was still unsuccessful on the second day, and the third.

On the fourth day someone came, but it wasn't Frank.

"You must be Gerard," the woman, who appeared to be in her fifties, or sixties, but was not even forty, said. He only nodded, too unsure and scared of what was going on. "Why don't you come inside, dear?"

She doesn't even look sad, Gerard thought as he listened to her talk, occasionally looking down to sip his too sweet coffee. She was beyond sorrow.

Frank died August 31st. When Gerard sat in the Ieros' kitchen it was April 27th.

"He left a note for you," she said, getting up from the table and retrieving a white but dirty envelope with Gerard's name written on it, from the counter. "I read it, I had to know. I'm sorry," she apologized, but Gerard couldn't blame her. He would have wanted to know too.

_Gee, I doubt that you'll ever come back to read this, but if you do, I'm sorry.  
I'm sorry I didn't trust you, that I didn't believe you.  
I'm sorry I love you so much I can't live without you.  
If you're reading this, I'm so sorry I'm not there.  
I'm sorry our tree is empty.  
I'm sorry._

It was hard to read because the ink was all smudged, especially towards the end, as if Frank had started crying in the middle of writing it. Maybe he had already been crying when he started writing it? 

Gerard's vision was blurred, too, from all the tears streaming silently down his cheeks. "I'm sorry," he whispered, and felt a warm hand squeeze his shoulder.

"Would you like me to take you to him?"

Gerard just nodded again, his throat too thick with tears to make a sound.

When they arrived at the cemetery it was in the middle of the afternoon and the spring sun shone brightly on them. There was an almost fresh bouquet of red roses lying in front of Frank's headstone, along with several flowers planted in the earth. 

Crouching down, Gerard traced Frank's name with his fingertips, shivering as he looked at the dates. October 31 1981 - August 31 1999. Frank wasn't even eighteen. 

"But I loved him," he said out loud. "I love him."

Mrs. Iero took him back to the house, and Gerard went back out to the tree, He ran his fingers over the rough bark, the wrinkled skin of an old tree that had seen it all. It had seen the love of two boys, the good, the bad, the end of Frank's life.

It was their tree.

It still is their tree, Gerard thinks as he draws it from afar for the hundredth time. The sun is shining, and there's a light breeze ruffling his dark hair. His fingers and hands and wrists ache with how long he's been sitting there, drawing, but it doesn't matter, because on the paper is that tree.

That tree of love, with branches of hope and leaves of happiness. The trunk is eternity, and the roots that go deep into the earth are sorrow.

It's their tree.


End file.
